A Step-by-Step Guide to Transfer C Drive to SSD in Windows 10/8/7

Why transfer C drive to SSD?

As we all know, SSD (short for Solid State Drive) has a faster speed of reading and writing than the original hard disk (like the HDD, short for Hard Disk Drive), there is no noise when it works. That’s why so many users decide to use it as a bootable disk. Thus, the key to promoting the performance of your current computer is to transfer C drive to SSD. It means that transfer your current OS to an SSD drive in Windows 11/10/8/7, including the system files and the applications you’ve installed.

There are some circumstances you may have encountered: Your computer spends a long time on booting; you got a rough experience when running some large games on your computer; someday you’ll find the C drive has not had enough space to run the applications correctly and smoothly, you have to increase C drive or transfer data to a larger disk, and so on.

Considering these situations, you may consider migrating the C drive to SSD in Windows 7/8/8.1/10/11 Operating System to get better performance than before.

Preparation work for moving C drive to SSD

Maybe you desperately want to know how to transfer OS to SSD, but before that, there is something you need to prepare:

•An SSD drive : as the destination location to save data of C drive when you transfer C drive to SSD. Its size may be smaller than your current hard disk, don’t worry, as long as the size of SSD disk is larger than the size of C drive, reserves some space for future extensions in SSD disk.

•Connect SSD to your current computer: connect or install the SSD drive to your computer. If your computer has two disk bays, install it internally. Otherwise, you can connect it to an external USB drive.

•OS migration software: there are many tools in the market to transfer OS to SSD, and most of users don’t know how to choose. So we recommend you an easy-to-use cloning software, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. It allows you to clone C drive from HDD to a smaller SSD and supports SSD partition alignment to further optimize the SSD performance.

How to transfer C drive to SSD from HDD?

AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional comes with "Migrate OS to SSD Wizard", making OS migration to another hard drive easy and effective. The following text is about how to transfer C drive to a new SSD disk without reinstalling Windows and applications.

Step 1. Install and launch the cloning software. On the main interface, click "Migrate OS" under the upper "Clone" column.

Step 2. Select an unallocated space on SSD drive. If there is no unallocated space on the destination disk, select F partition on Disk 2 (SSD), make sure you have ticked the option "I want to delete all partitions on this disk 2 to migrate system to this disk", then hit "Next".

Tip: You can also move C drive to another location, like a Network share, NAS device, USB flash drive, an external disk, etc. It depends on you.

Step 3. In next window, customize the size and the location of the new created G partition. Click "Next".

Note:✎...

Resize your partition on SSD disk to get an unallocated space if you don’t want to delete all partitions on SSD drive. And make sure the unallocated space must be larger than the size of C drive.

 You have to back up important files on SSD disk to another location in advance.

Step 4. Ensure you have noticed how to boot OS from SSD or HDD, click "Finish" to continue.

Step 4. Preview the pending operations and the changes of Disk 2 (SSD), and press the "Apply" button to migrate C drive to SSD.

Notes:✎...

The operation will be completed under the PreOS Mode, and the computer will be restarted.

 You should enter the BIOS to set the SSD drive as the first boot device when the copy is done.

 If you transfer C drive from MBR disk to GPT SSD drive, you have to change the boot mode from Legacy to UEFI so as to boot from it successfully. The vice versa is also true.

Conclusion

With AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, you can transfer OS and other apps saved on C drive to a new SSD without reinstallation just within a few clicks. If you want to transfer all data on the whole hard disk drive to SSD, you can use it to clone all partitions on the hard drive to SSD. In fact, it’s far more than cloning software and it allows you to recover lost partition, extend C drive without formatting, and so on.